August 2nd, 2010
Five people for risotto, green bean salad, herbed bread and peach ice cream – it must be August. Somehow, this puts me in the mood for the “Song of the Open Road”. Somehow the last lines have been with me all day today. Apologies, for the excerpting, to Walt Whitman.
Allons! whoever you are come travel with me!
Traveling with me you find what never tires.
The earth never tires,
The earth is rude, silent, incomprehensible at first, Nature is rude and incomprehensible at first,
Be not discouraged, keep on, there are divine things well envelop’d,
I swear to you there are divine things more beautiful than words can tell.
Allons! we must not stop here,
However sweet these laid-up stores, however convenient this dwelling we cannot remain here,
However shelter’d this port and however calm these waters we must not anchor here,
However welcome the hospitality that surrounds us we are permitted to receive it but a little while.
Allons! the road is before us!
It is safe—I have tried it—my own feet have tried it well—be not detain’d!
Let the paper remain on the desk unwritten, and the book on the shelf unopen’d!
Let the tools remain in the workshop! let the money remain unearn’d!
Let the school stand! mind not the cry of the teacher!
Let the preacher preach in his pulpit! let the lawyer plead in the court, and the judge expound the law.
Camerado, I give you my hand!
I give you my love more precious than money,
I give you myself before preaching or law;
Will you give me yourself? will you come travel with me?
Shall we stick by each other as long as we live?
Tags: family, house, neighbors, rememberance
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July 31st, 2010
Today I finished spraying the fruit trees (and roses, grape vines and brussels sprouts) with Surround CP. Surround is made from white kaolin clay and food-grade wax – a wonderfully effective pesticide that coats leaves and fruit with a thin layer of what is essentially, porcelain. Insects are put off by the material, and those that ingest it, die. I’ve found it works well as a fungicide as well, protecting my hybrid fruit crops from the rusts and fungi carried by their wild cousins that grow rampant around my garden. The beauty of Surround is that it is completely passive, aside from the rather startling sight of ghostly grey foliage. I grow everything in close quarters and can’t afford to spray a poison on a tree that will kill the strawberries growing under the branches – and that’s aside from the considerations about my well, that is under the entire garden.
I chose a calm, sunny day – fortunately a day I had off from work, and my backpack sprayer and I made the rounds.
Pictured is a little Liberty apple tree with a sad backstory. This was one of my first fruit trees, purchased in 2004 when we were building the house. I planted it a safe distance from the construction and our septic field and planned to move it to a more advantageous position later on. Years went by and the spruce and pines grew up around the little tree that didn’t die, but did not get appreciably bigger either. I moved it in 2009 and you can tell from the photo below that it is still small. It bore for the first time this year and reminds me of a quince bonsai I saw at Longwood Gardens – a delicate structure with outlandishly disproportionate fruit.
Tags: garden, house, orchard fruit, summer
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July 30th, 2010
2010 is officially a wonderful garden year and a bountiful harvest. Everyone on the road agrees: tomatoes are early (sometimes I have only green ones in September), the Brussels sprouts are forming up nicely, the corn has tasseled out – even our Silver Queen. And the peaches, oh my.
This year I bought a pole bean selection from Fedco. The packet contained yellow, speckled, purple and brown beans and they’re all delicious. They are over-growing their 12′ stakes, but I can’t complain, really.
Perhaps the best part of this season is the longevity of many of our more fragile crops. We’ve had very hot days, but also cool nights and more rainfall than I’ve seen in July. The lettuce is still coming in and the second crop of turnips is off to a rousing start. My April planting of “Bull’s Blood” beet greens is still viable, and the mesclun that started in late March is just this week too far gone to make another salad. Now we’ll just have to wait and see about the first frost.
Tags: garden, harvest, kitchen, seeds, summer, weather
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July 27th, 2010
Pesto is one of the barometers of a Maine summer. Basil requires long days and hot afternoons to truly grow fat, glossy leaves that give off a distinctive, almost skunky aroma and some years we just don’t get that. 2010 is shaping up to be the best garden year in recent memory, and the pesto so far is A+.
I picked almost a kitchen-sized garbage bag of basil, mostly because I wanted to be able to start the recipe off with “a garbage bag of basil”. I prefer to harvest in mid-afternoon (the plants are free of dew and at their most fragrant), and I simply cut them back by two or three nodes. I use the stems and all, but I do remove blossoms and buds. They seem to make the final product slightly bitter.
Stuff the bowl of a food processor with leaves and stems. Drizzle with olive oil. Add 1/2 tsp sea salt, 1 clove garlic and 2 Tbs pine nuts (toasted in a frying pan first) per batch. If you will be adding all the batches together you can keep track and add all the seasonings at once at the end, but I find doing it by increments is easier. Process until smooth, adding more olive oil if necessary.
I have been amazed at the number of people who comment about the photos on this blog – generally about the objects in the background. Turns out food photographers are all about isolating the product – setting the stage with your recipe as the star, and not so much with the bottle of Chinese black vinegar that has nothing to do with the current recipe. As long as you read this blog, you’re going to see that vinegar on the back of the counter. Also the red wine, cassis, port and probably a roll of paper towels. I don’t set these photos up, sadly, I just live here.
Cook your favorite pasta, drain and pour into a large serving bowl. Mix in about a cup of pesto per 6 servings, and some grated parm or asiago cheese. If my mother isn’t coming over we like to add hot pepper flakes. Freeze the remaining pesto in freezer jelly jars to remember summer come some winter dinner.
Tags: garden, harvest, kitchen, recipe, summer, weather
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July 25th, 2010
Today was a perfect day for a garden club tour; a bit of rain and clouds to discourage the casual observers but not enough wind to damage the white begonias, cool enough to walk energetically in a heavy skirt and sensible shoes, misty enough so that I didn’t regret forgetting my hat. This particular garden had not previously been open to the public. The cutting and kitchen gardens are visible through the wrought iron fence from the street, but it was wonderful to get up close and personal with the sunken Italianate formal garden, the mossy pergola that faces the cove, and some really lurid roses that were nevertheless enjoyable under the low, gray clouds. Oh, and the shingle style dog house with slate roof, dutch doors and window boxes was just the right touch of surreal.
My pen dropped out of my pocket somewhere along the 1/2 mile entrance road, and my batteries ran out before the kitchen garden, but here are what notes and images I managed to take away:
Artichokes – beautiful plants and evidently productive here. The head gardener went on at length about daylight and temperatures requirements for full maturity, but honestly I wouldn’t care if I didn’t get a whole lot of fruit – the plants were striking in themselves. Of course, he doesn’t have that luxury.
Cold frames extraordinaire: I went over to look at some cold frames – 15′ x 2′ high on the short end, rising to 4′ and faced with glass panels. When I looked in to the frames, I realized that they had been excavated to a depth of 10′. There were ladders built into the walls at either end for access. With that much berming they must be very cozy even in early spring, and if I thought I could dig a hole 12′ deep on my lot I’d try it out.
Smoke bush in bloom with Madonna lilies rising through the mist of blossoms – quite a striking effect.
Datura was everywhere, and lent an exotic air to the otherwise common assortment of border flowers: ligularia, phlox, mulliens, begonias and thalictrum.
Tags: architectural landscape, Bar Harbor, garden, landscape, perrenial
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July 22nd, 2010
- . . . The murmuring pines and the hemlocks,
- Bearded with moss, and in garments green, indistinct in the twilight,
- Stand like Druids of eld, with voices sad and prophetic,
- Stand like harpers hoar, with beards that rest on their bosoms.
- Loud from its rocky caverns, the deep-voiced neighboring ocean
- Speaks, and in accents disconsolate answers the wail of the forest.
- This is the forest primeval; but where are the hearts that beneath it
- Leaped like the roe, when he hears in the woodland the voice of the huntsman?
- Where is the thatch-roofed village, the home of Acadian farmers —
- Men whose lives glided on like rivers that water the woodlands,
- Darkened by shadows of earth, but reflecting an image of heaven?
- Waste are those pleasant farms, and the farmers forever departed!
- Scattered like dust and leaves, when the mighty blasts of October
- Seize them, and whirl them aloft, and sprinkle them far o’er the ocean.
- Naught but tradition remains of the beautiful village of Grand-Pré.
- Ye who believe in affection that hopes, and endures, and is patient,
- Ye who believe in the beauty and strength of woman’s devotion,
- List to the mournful tradition still sung by the pines of the forest;
- List to a Tale of Love in Acadie, home of the happy.
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- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow – Evangeline
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Tags: Bar Harbor, summer
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July 17th, 2010
Time for some navel-gazing. Below is a collection of search terms that brought readers to this blog over the past few months:
Raspberries (also razberry, raspberrys, rasberry), jam, pie, bush, growing
Still life (also still lives, stull life and still)
Hamburger stand inventory spread sheet. (Really?)
bad composition painting
bed construction (presumably garden beds)
Cinder blocks, cinder block construction, use cinder blocks, cement blocks – one of my biggest referral sites is a cinder block construction company in Arizona.
Blue mason jar
Screw down trivot photos
Amy Pollien, amy pollien, amy pollen, amy pollen bees
Time is but the stream
Poverty cake
Dumping bees into a hive at night time
George Dorr’s caretaker’s cottage
Yokkana seeds
Bonsai sisr
MDI Skate Park
Painting like Janet Fish (Thanks!)
Tags: neighbors
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July 15th, 2010
On June 24, 1934, my mother was promoted to the “Primary Department” at the Bloomfield Federated Church. It’s a lovely certificate, with copperplate handwriting and the picture of the young Savior. She was 6 years old. And she kept this for the next 75 years in a paper bag with her first mortgage and a picture of her mother.
Tags: family, hardy ancestors, heritage
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July 12th, 2010
Last month our neighbors gifted us with a Significant Rock. It came on a Big Boom Truck – possibly the biggest vehicle to ever climb up our gravel road and I’ll stop with the capital letters now. The rock has a rather formal placement exactly perpendicular to the front of the house and lined up with one of the window bays. People have actually stopped their cars in the road and commented on it. Then they go on to mention the garden, and their garden back home, and then inquire after lobster, and really, it takes an awesome rock to stop tourists in their pursuit of local seafood. This weekend our neighbors called; “Did our rock want a life partner?”. Of course we said “Yes!”.
K’s boom truck showed up on Sunday afternoon in the pouring rain. I was on my third pair of shoes and already soaking wet, so a little more water wasn’t a problem.
Now reach into the truck. . .
And pull out a rock. . .
And confab on the placement. Because it’s not going anywhere after that webbing comes off.
A beautiful rock, nestled in blueberries. Note the worked edge – this might have been part of a foundation for a Bar Harbor “cottage” lost in the Great Fire. Now it resides with us, forever or until boom truck do us part.
Tags: architectural landscape, construction, garden, house, neighbors, summer, weather
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July 10th, 2010
Today I went down to Southwest Harbor for a concert. The Southwest Harborites were also celebrating the annual Pink Flamingo festival (the lawn ornaments are considered native fauna) and the Coast Guard base was having an open house so it was a high time on the village main street. I took the back road down to Clark Point and stopped at this stand to buy a jar of pear jam.
The sign is quite well designed, with the whole positive/negative space thing going on, and “Antiques” is spelled correctly. What happened to “bouys”? Curse those pesky diphthongs!
I bought a jar of pear jam. I’ve tried to make it myself, and could possibly make gallons of the stuff from the Seckel pear tree’s bounty, but my trial batches were gritty and insipid. This jar from Maine’s Own Treats has a nice clear color. The contents list includes: Pears, Sugar, Applesauce, Apple Juice and Pectin. Applesauce sounds like it might be the secret ingredient. We’re going to try the jam out tomorrow on Sunday waffles and then I’ll decide if this combination is worth another experiment.
I like the “We’re Open” sign, too. There wasn’t a soul around – what changes when they’re closed?
Tags: garden, harvest, kitchen, neighbors, orchard fruit, summer
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